Re: OT: Please send prayers to my dog Fern

[Wheezercat42]

Hi Michelle,   Size and age on the dogs does make a difference - and some breeds get cancer easier than others - Golden Retrievers are one of those breeds.  I heard that roughly 1 out of 4 Goldens will get cancer before they're something like 4 or 5 (it's been a while since I heard the statistic, and since I didn't have a golden, it didn't all stick with me).  I'd be surprised if other breeds didn't also - although the ant spray sounds suspicious.  If it was injected into the ground, theoretically, it could stay in the soil and turn up in the grass, but I don't know if it would for this long or if just walking through the grass with the chemical in it's sap might be enough exposure to cause cancer.  I think we all know about FeLV and cancers.  I lost a father and son to lung cancer in '01.  Sam, the father, had been positive for exposure for a year before he went positive for disease in late feb/early March '01, then he turned up with 100% of both lungs being nothing but massive tumors on July 5th.  Sam had turned 3 on 6/27.  His son, Slick Willy, was the first one of my original 6 pos,'s to go positive for disease in 3/00.  He started showing signs of lung cancer in Oct. '01 and died on 10/19 - (2 weeks later).  Willy had turned 2 on 7/3/01.  Willy has a brother named Gaytah who was exposed to the same kitten as Willy & Sam (and all the others), spent lots of time snuggling with the kitten before we found out he was positive for FeLV, had hugely enlarged lymph nodes like Sam and Willy did during the first month after we found out the kitten had it,and never tested positive to any degree.  Gaytah's still here, still healthy, and still neg (and turned 5 last July 3rd.).  i still don't know why Gaytah escaped it and his Dad and brother didn't.  His Mom and both of his mother's parents all got through it with no symptoms of anything, and no degree of positive on their tests.  Where there's life, there's hope. "Chance Favors the prepared mind." ~ Louis Pasteur Kathy